Slavic Prosody: Language Change and Phonological Theory

by Christina Y. Bethin

• ISBN13: 9780521591485
• ISBN10: 0521591481
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-07-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In Slavic Prosody Professor Bethin gives a coherent account of the Slavic languages at the time of their differentiation and relates these developments to issues in phonological theory. First Professor Bethin argues that the syllable structure of Slavic changed before the fall of the jers and suggests that intrasyllabic and intersyllabic reorganization in Late Common Slavic was far more significant for Slavic prosody than the loss of weak jers. She then makes a case for the existence of a bisyllabic prosodic domain in Late Common Slavic and trochaic metrical organization. Finally, she explores the implications of Slavic data for phonological theory, discussing sonority, skeletal structure, the representation of length and prominence, and language typology in some detail.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	xii	(1)
Preface	xiii	(2)
List of abbreviations	xv
Introduction	1	(11)
1 The syllable in Slavic: form and function	12	(100)
1.0 Background	12	(4)
1.1 Syllable theory	16	(9)
1.2 Common Slavic syllable structure	25	(21)
1.2.1 The Moraic Constraint	28	(2)
1.2.2 The Onset Constraint	30	(4)
1.2.3 Intrasyllabic harmony	34	(4)
1.2.4 The No Coda Constraint	38	(1)
1.2.5 Monophthongization	39	(7)
1.3 Late Common Slavic syllable structures	46	(49)
1.3.1 Changes in nonhigh vowel and liquid diphthongs	47	(21)
1.3.2 Changes in high vowel and liquid diphthongs	68	(10)
1.3.3 Developments in liquid and jer sequences	78	(6)
1.3.4 Changes in the nasal vowels	84	(5)
1.3.5 Syllable structure and "tense jers"	89	(2)
1.3.6 Contraction	91	(4)
1.4 The bisyllabic domain of Late Common Slavic dialects	95	(12)
1.4.1 Compensatory lengthening	96	(8)
1.4.2 Changes in the jers	104	(3)
1.5 Conclusions	107	(5)
2 Beyond the syllable: prominence relations	112	(76)
2.0 Background	112	(5)
2.1 Metrical theory and the expression of prominence	117	(4)
2.2 Common Slavic and Late Common Slavic accent	121	(14)
2.2.1 The shortening of acutes	127	(2)
2.2.2 The neo-acute retraction	129	(6)
2.3 The question of quantity in prominence	135	(10)
2.3.1 The progressive shift and the neo-circumflex in Slovene	135	(6)
2.3.2 Bulgarian evidence of quantity	141	(1)
2.3.3 Transitional Late Common Slavic areas: Czech and Upper Sorbian	142	(3)
2.4 The bisyllabic domain	145	(16)
2.4.1 Pretonic length in North Central Slavic	146	(3)
2.4.2 The Slovak Rhythmic Law	149	(3)
2.4.3 The pretonic syllable in Russian and Belarusian dialects	152	(3)
2.4.4 The question of [o] in northern Russian dialects	155	(2)
2.4.5 Polabian accent shifts	157	(3)
2.4.6 Slovincian retraction	160	(1)
2.5 Changes in prosodic domains	161	(11)
2.5.1 The Neostokavian accent retraction in Serbian and Croatian	162	(6)
2.5.2 Later prosodic developments in Slovene	168	(4)
2.6 The evolution of fixed stress	172	(8)
2.6.1 Initial stress systems	175	(1)
2.6.2 Polish penultimate stress	176	(2)
2.6.3 Antepenultimate stress in Macedonian	178	(2)
2.7 Polabian stress	180	(3)
2.8 Conclusions	183	(5)
3 Theoretical considerations	188	(73)
3.0 Introduction	188	(5)
3.1 Sonority and syllable structure	193	(21)
3.1.1 Glides	200	(5)
3.1.2 Vowel-zero alternations	205	(9)
3.2 Length	214	(20)
3.2.1 Length in Slovak and the Rhythmic Law	217	(7)
3.2.2 Reflexes of (*)e in Serbian and Croatian	224	(5)
3.2.3 Gemination in Ukrainian	229	(5)
3.3 Prominence	234	(12)
3.3.1 Stress and length in Slovene	236	(3)
3.3.2 Tone and stress in Serbian and Croatian	239	(4)
3.3.3 Representing prominence	243	(3)
3.4 Constraints and constraint interaction	246	(5)
3.5 Phonological structure and language typology	251	(10)
Conclusion	261	(5)
Notes	266	(36)
References	302	(45)
Index	347